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Police to set up more surveillance cameras

WATCHING OVER: One of the surveillance cameras installed by the City Police.

Anand Haridas

Entire city to be covered in a phased manner

KOCHI: The City Police have started installing the next set of surveillance cameras in the city. The first set was installed at Palarivattom Junction.

Cameras are now being set up at Vytilla, Manorama junction and Edappally junction. Work on these sites started on Tuesday. Vytilla and Edappally are two of the busiest junctions in the city and monitoring traffic at these points have always been a big task for the City Police.

Each junction, where the surveillance system is being set up, will have five cameras, covering four directions and one dome camera.

Soon, cameras will be installed at eight more junctions in the city, at the two railway stations, bus terminal and offices like the District Collectorate, Corporation office and taluk office.

“While the cameras at junctions are basically for crime prevention, those at office spaces are meant to maintain law and order,” said Manoj Abraham, City Police Commissioner.

The visuals shot using these cameras will be transferred through optical fibre networks and recorded at the control room. This is done to ensure availability of streaming video in real time. “Visuals of up to 15 days will be available in the server. This, along with data base on criminals, will help to bring down criminal activities in public space,” said Mr. Abraham.

Another advantage of uploading the video recordings in the server is that those who have access to the server can monitor them, irrespective of where they are physically. The move comes as the police are going for enhancing technological expertise of the force at State-level.

Control room

The hi-tech control room at Thiruvananthapuram was commissioned on Tuesday and Kochi is next in the line, followed by Kozhikode. “Eighteen patrol vehicles fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) are already here. This along with cameras will streamline the monitoring of main points in the city,” said T. Vikram, Deputy City Police Commissioner.

While the surveillance cameras will be helpful in tracking the movement of vehicles through entry points to the city, it is believed that the technology will give extra advantage of plugging vehicle thefts from the city.

“With cameras in place and GPS-fitted patrol jeeps, the force could attend to law and order issues at main points in the city even before we start getting calls from the public,” said Mr. Vikram.

As the cameras being put up are expensive, the City Police are planning to cover the entire city in a phased manner.